Big majority of SMBs prefer to lease IT solutions

Nearly 70 percent of local small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) prefer to "lease" IT solutions as a means to save investment costs, a report said yesterday.

"Leasing will enable enterprises to start enjoying the benefits of IT solutions soonest, but pay their investment over a long period of time," said Bell Chiang (江衍宏), IBM Taiwan executive for general and medium-sized business, at a media briefing yesterday.

According to Chiang, the results showed that when smaller firms are offered the option of leasing, most of them will deploy IT solutions in the areas of enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and supply chain management.

The survey carried out by IBM, which polled 370 SMBs in Taiwan during the third quarter, also revealed that when choosing IT solutions, 33.2 percent of firms said price is the first priority, while 29.6 percent will go with a vendor which they have worked with before.

Meanwhile, 52.6 percent of all SMBs have set up IT departments within their own organizations, with the manufacturing sector being the most proactive in this regard, with a saturation rate of 63.5 percent.

By comparison, only 29.2 percent of retail and wholesale companies, which account for half of the nation's SMBs, have IT departments, according to the survey.

This means that Taiwan's SMBs still have a way to go in terms of utilizing IT solutions to facilitate operations, thus presenting untapped potential to solution providers such as IBM, Chiang said.